Bug#906296: jackd2: Jackd mysteriously uninstalled, libreadline6 disappears from repo?

[dbrz]

Package: jackd2
Version: 2:1.9.12-1~kxstudio1
Severity: important

Dear Maintainer,

Today, I tried to use my audio workstation (qtractor) to do some editing, only to discover that Cadence had been uninstalled. I went to reinstall and run it, and found that jackdbus was missing, and a cursory search revealed that jackd2 was no longer on my system.
Now, I had previously installed jackd2 as part of setting up my DAW, so this seemed fishy. So I went to install it again, and found that it was missing libreadline6.

To my utter shock, libreadline6 had packages for Sid, Jessie, and Wheezy--but not for Stretch. I ended up installing an older version manually by downloading the .deb from the website, which will no doubt make future updates very fun.

My question is: how did this happen? Trying to install jackd2 on a fresh Stretch install would have revealed this issue immediately. In fact, the entire reason I'm using Debian right now is because this sort of thing is actively prevented by Debian's package maintenance process. I've been resisting the urge to channel the spirit of Torvalds into this email :P

Now, I *have* been installing some packages from external repos, and I've been doing some fiddling with gdebi and such. But given that the required dependency is literally missing from stretch's repos, something tells me that's the problem.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 9.5
  APT prefers stable-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.9.0-7-amd64 (SMP w/12 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages jackd2 depends on:
ii  coreutils              8.26-3
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]  1.5.61
ii  libasound2             1.1.3-5
ii  libc6                  2.24-11+deb9u3
ii  libdbus-1-3            1.10.26-0+deb9u1
ii  libexpat1              2.2.0-2+deb9u1
ii  libgcc1                1:6.3.0-18+deb9u1
ii  libjack-jackd2-0       2:1.9.12-1~kxstudio1
ii  libreadline6           6.2+dfsg-0.1
ii  libsamplerate0         0.1.8-8+b2
ii  libsndfile1            1.0.27-3
ii  libstdc++6             6.3.0-18+deb9u1
ii  multiarch-support      2.24-11+deb9u3
ii  python                 2.7.13-2
ii  python-dbus            1.2.4-1+b1

Versions of packages jackd2 recommends:
ii  jackd2-firewire  2:1.9.12-1~kxstudio1
ii  libpam-modules   1.1.8-3.6

Versions of packages jackd2 suggests:
pn  jack-tools   <none>
pn  meterbridge  <none>

-- Configuration Files:
/etc/security/limits.d/audio.conf changed:
@audio   -  rtprio     95
@audio   -  memlock    unlimited


-- debconf information:
* jackd/tweak_rt_limits: true